The water was a little low, but we sure made the best of it. For those of you kayakers out there…..This river is the gem run of Central America….a total classic. It reminded me of the South Fork of the Salmon near Forks of the Salmon, California. It was a thrown room of polished granite.
It didn´t exactly have any big hucks, but we did our best to keep it real.
As you can see, El Salvador has been a full package deal, offering everything we set out for. Surf, Schools, Kayaking, Media and plenty of folks stoked to rally behind the cause. We continued the theme this weekend.
After the Irish boys arrived, we got to paddle one of the best runs so far on the trip, right on the border of El Salvador and Guatemala. This was their first day on the trip!
It had classic whitewater and amazing scenery.
At our demonstration in San Salvador, we met up with one of the only Salvadorean raft guides in the country. Lucky for us, he had some great beta for us. We did this river because of its close proximity to the school we were visiting in Santa Ana.
It was fun playboating, scenery and mellow whitewater.
Getting to and from the river always seems to be a bit of a mission since we can’t take Baby off roadin’.
We spent 5 days hanging on Playa El Tunco outside La Libertad, 30 minutes from San Salvador. When people talk about great surfing in El Salvador this is what they mean. We set the rig up right in front of three surf breaks, and attracted mobs of people over the rig.
I took the two photos below laying in my hammock on top of the rig!
This was a beach break right in front of the rig. Tyler would go out front and practice his new trick, using the curl of the wave to initiate a front flip. We are calling it the Floopsy-Doo.
Peering from the hammock a little bit Southeast, you could see the river mouth surf break, a world famous Left.
This is a staple trademark rock that was just in front of our spot. The sunsets were OK too……
We are in route to Guatemala City to fill up with Biodiesel, and Antigua for more schools. However, we couldn´t help but stop over for a quick jaunt on the flooding class IV/V Cahabon River. We had an awesome day!
Andy and Anna followed along high above.
The Macaw River is usually done with next to no water by inflatable kayaks in the dry season. We were reccomended this river because of its character, and the abnormally high water. We got permission from the dam to paddle it. The only problem was that when we got to the put-in there was no water at all. After paddling through small pools and portaging for 4 hours, we finally got to the real put-in. The beta we were given was bad. The sun went down, and we had an un-expected night out on the river.
We had fun, but were stoked that Andy snuck those matches into our drybags!
Luckily, the take out was at a fancy lodge, and Andy, the Girls and the Lyrical King had a great place to sleep for the night. Cold ground was my bed last night, and rock was my pillow too! The river was actually super high quality once we reached the water!
We´ve been surfing so much lately, we almost forgot we were kayakers….. We will be getting back on the horse soon enough. It was good to get back in the boats for a wiked day of waterfalls on the agua azul!
Seth went deeeeep on this one.
Afterwards, we hired a guide to take us down for a look at some of the lower falls. Lets just say, we are keeping this set of falls in the back pocket. Total sickness, we need to save our backs for the rest of the trip.
Diego and boys took us out for a well needed kayak trip on the Rio Alemana. It was good to get back into the whitewater after 3 weeks of surfing along the coast. The future is bright for kayaking.
The water was up and there was a ton of good playboating. This is a big Argentinan crew, so we were practicing our spanish the whole time. There were teaching a bunch of local 18 year old guys how to raft.
They were surfing the raft!
As always, we are loving it.
It started off simple. Get to the train station, load the boats, and head on down the Setentrion River in the Sierra Madre of North-Central Mexico for a first descent (this river had never been attempted).
As we were cruising along, we got hit by a huge thunderstorm, and a landslide blocked one of the tunnels we were going through. For the better part of an hour, the train kept ramming the pile of debris in attempt to break through. We were all choking on carbon monoxide the whole time, while sitting in a dark tunnel.
When we got to the put-in, the tacos never tasted so good!
We camped at the train station that night, and got swarmed by every kid in the village.
The run was going to be 4 days. On day 2, we put in and only made it down river about 6 out of 34 kms that we were trying to make it (about half of that was portaging around heinous rapids.)
We set up camp on a nice beach, and got swarmed with sand flies the entire afternoon. Our stove got swindled the night before by the native kids, so we made a fire and gobbled down some freeze dried dinner (yuck-o).
This is what the camp looked like before the flood.
This is what it looked like the next morning.
Seth´s account….
I laid in my bivy sack, and felt sheets of water pounding over me. I was comfortable with a tarp proped up by a stick hanging over head that kept out around half the water. We knew the river was on the rise, but never thought that it would come up to our camp, which was around 10 verticle feet above the river. I slept a little, and suddenly felt a surge of water and current come over me. I felt the euphoria of weightlessness as if I was floating away. As I struggled to unzip my bivy and swim free, I yelled as loud as I could ¨boyz….we are f!$ked!!!!¨ I realized that I would not make a very good contender on the TV show Fear Factor. I was so discombobulated, tweaked and turned around, I couldn´t for the life of me free the zipper as I swirled out of control in the current. Thank goodness for my Thermarest which kept me afloat. I yelled for help, and seconds later I felt Joe grab a hold of me, and together, we were able to rip the zipper open.
It was pitch black. I remember scrambling to find my dry bag that had my still camera, Video Camera, Passport and Satellite phone that was floating away. Luckily, we got that. It was still a monsoon like down pour out, and the lightning flashes revealed a river 3x the width we had experienced that day….raging, completely out of control. I was in full survival mode, as I yelled to the boys ¨Run for the hills, the big one could still be coming!!!!¨ My head lamp was gone, I scratched my way up the banks with bare feet in my underwear. My camera bag, bivy and drenched down sleeping bag was all I could salvage.
Tyler had his Eagles Nest Hammock and a tarp strung up in a tree, and was situated the highest above the river. Soup yelled ¨Tyler, Tyler are you OK—Get UP!!!!¨ We made it over to where he was, and he was standing there stark naked in his flip flops.
¨No worries dude, I got the boats (Barely)!¨ We all gathered around his tent, and sat 4 of us across his hammock. We were laughing, and happy to be alive. Ty´s camp was around 60 feet up from the river that day, and it was now beach front, with surges and waves splashing up at us as we dangled from the tree. Joe jumped in the river and retrieved Rocky´s 2 liter jug of wine. We drank through the night. The river jumped up 15 feet in only a couple hours, and was beginning to subside.
The next day, we tallyed the gear. Joe lost one of his dry bags and a paddle. Rocky lost all of his kayak gear. Besides a few random items, all seemed to be saved. We climbed an enormous talus slope up to the RxR tracks, just as the maintence crew finished digging out a landslide directly above camp. This was the flood of the year. There were over 10 landslides all along the train route above the river. We hitched aboard the cleanup train, and traveled along as they dug out all the lanslides on our way back to Creel. We canceled all the other rivers, packed the rig, and headed for the beach!!!!!
James ¨Rocky¨Contos…aka the Junk Show.
Our best advice….. If you ever show up to the put’in, and this guy is your guide.
DON´T GO!!!!!
We met up with Alex Hotze at his home wave, on our way South, and he showed us what was up on Colarado´s best wave. Most of us got stomped on.
